Sienna Bentley
I’m finally ready to sit down and get some of my thoughts out from Victorious. Yeah, yeah, I’m like two weeks late, get off my back.
If you read my pre-event article (I’m sure you did – right?), you’ll know that Portsmouth is my hometown and I was returning for the first time in rather a long time. I thought I was adequately prepared for the emotional rollercoaster, but add some PMDD symptoms into the mix… and my god, what a mess.
I spent probably a good hour and a half sitting on the seafront to calm the overwhelm I was feeling (tears or sea spray, who’s to say?). I couldn’t even light an emotional support cigarette as the wind whisked it from my fingers before I could even flick my lighter.
It’s one of those weird things that’s difficult to put into words. When I got off the train at the station I used to live by, I instinctively looked for my mum’s car. When I exited the station to walk to the stranger’s house that would become my home for the next two nights, I realised I needed a map. It’s a bizarre dichotomy of returning to a place so familiar and yet not knowing it at all.
I moved house around 20 times before I was 20, and never really felt like I truly belonged anywhere. I used to ask myself, “where is home?” But last month, when I talked to people about the fact that I was going to Victorious, I found myself saying “I’m going home”.
I felt so much anticipation about visiting a place that holds so much emotion and so many striking memories – wonderful and deeply devastating – because I was scared of all of those feelings rushing back in a tsunami I couldn’t control nor prepare for.
I ended up not wanting to leave.
So yeah, this is how you would’ve found me on Friday morning at Victorious Festival: alone, deep in my feels, in my luteal phase and frankly confused because I had no idea what I was doing. But don’t worry, it gets better.
This is where I will sing The Slow Country’s praises: the day improved infinitely once the lovely members of the band essentially adopted me.
Let me shift writing gears into review mode just for a minute.
A love letter to small stages
Partially shielded from the gale-force winds, The Bandstand is an intimate stage that allows the audience to have a much more immersive and close-up experience. The Slow Country brought a real sort of romantic energy to the seafront. I don’t know how else to put it. I just love it when a band is clearly having so much fun and the friendship between them is so clear it almost becomes tangible. There’s nothing like it when you’re seeing it in real time, I can only imagine how it feels to be part of it.
“This is the stuff that dreams are made of for a band like us,” guitarist James Darley told me at Truck in July. “Getting to be up on stage with all of our best friends.”
If you’ve ever seen me at a gig in a small venue, you’ll know that that’s where my heart lies. It’s almost embarrassing the grin plastered on my face when I get to experience shows like that – and open air is no different. Big shows have their place, of course, but you simply can’t replicate the intimacy, community and the sense that you are truly sharing something that you are afforded on a smaller stage.
This was my third time seeing and meeting The Slow Country; I know from our conversations – and common sense, really, but I’m not famous for having buckets of that – that logistically, seven people on a stage can be challenging (“I’m usually worried I’m going to poke someone in the eye with my bow,” violinist Miren Summers told me at Truck Festival), but as someone watching, they perfectly balance the passion and energy of rocking out with the professionalism of making it all look so easy – the way they’re all up there together and maneuver the limited space, weaving in and out between one another.
I think it would be remiss of me not to talk a little bit about the importance of smaller stages at festivals, both for artists and punters. With Reading and Leeds having gotten rid of the BBC Introducing stage this year, which has been a crucial mainstay of artistic discovery and showcase for breakout talent over the years, it was a relief to see a steadfast commitment to these spaces at Victorious. Festivals are (or should be), at their core, hubs where people come together to celebrate music, culture and community. It might be a headline name that brings people through the door, but the sheer variety of what you might find once you’re there should be the real driver – in my view, anyway.
And for emerging artists, it’s these places where they reach new ears. Festivals bring opportunities for people to just stroll in and see what the band is about, and maybe leave as a new fan. I do wholeheartedly believe that robbing artists and audiences of these spaces and opportunities is detrimental to live music culture, so it does make me happy to see that at Victorious, they’re not going anywhere.
This was reinforced through the various stages I visited across the day and weekend. Particularly the Under The Trees stage, which is another small, canopied stage – you guessed it – under the trees on Southsea common. Gans were brilliant here, and I have genuinely never witnessed energy like what they brought that evening. They all-out raged with positivity, with drummer Euan Woodman yelling “don’t fucking drop me!” as he dove head first into the crowd. (As an aside, truly lovely bloke. Chatted with literally everyone at the barrier after the set finished when he must’ve been absolutely knackered.)
Portsmouth also has a thriving indie music scene and so many up-and-comers who deserve a platform – shoutout our boys Cade, also Under The Trees – and it’s very obvious that the festival programmers at Victorious are keen to give them this spotlight. Warms my cynical and grumpy heart.
The rest of my day was vastly improved
I wouldn’t have even thought to go and watch the Vengaboys on the Castle Stage had I still been by myself. There was absolutely no room for wallowing in that crowd. And wallow I did not. What an experience it was – gloriously terrible. High energy, 80s bright-coloured lycra, sailor costumes and a mammoth crowd of drunk partiers actually does make for rather a good time, believe it or not.
We played a guessing game to see what song would come next; aside from the classic ‘We Like to Party’, none of the tracks on the set list were originals, of course. LMFAO’s ‘Party Rock’ was in there – naturally – followed by ‘We Will Rock You’… each song choice more baffling than the last and obliterated (in a good way, I think) in under 30 seconds to avoid copyright infringement. It was great. A spiritual experience, one might say. Genius at work.
Thank you to The Slow Country for kindly taking me under your collective wing before I split off to go and conduct interviews and sit on a rock to gather my thoughts.
It’s a shithole, but it’s my shithole
You know how people often talk about their siblings, like, “I can give my sister shit, but if anyone else gives my sister shit, I’ll end them”. I’m an only child (sorry about it) so I don’t inherently understand that concept or relationship, but I feel protective of Portsmouth in a way that feels similar to me, though perhaps on a much lower-stakes level.
Portsmouth is a shithole, but it’s my shithole.
The city truly comes alive over Victorious weekend, and it feels like anything is possible. A man walked into Wetherspoons in full fancy dress. “That’s not so weird,” I hear you say. “What was he dressed up as?”
Jimmy Savile.
And no, while I don’t condone this behaviour, it was a stark, bucket-of-cold-water-over-the-head reminder that I was in fact… home.
P.S. I have only written about Friday because you will have seen (and if you haven’t seen, what are you doing?) our visual representations of the rest of the weekend once Ray made the journey down to Pompey.
Vlogs, yes. We made vlogs. If you don’t follow us on Instagram, I have, out of the sheer kindness of my heart and soul, provided them below so you can watch us having a wonderful time.
